Читать книгу UniteDead Kingdom - Stuart Irving Irving - Страница 10

Half an hour later Joe Cheung, 49, stood frozen at the top of the stairs in his brother-in-law’s house listening to a series of terrifying voice mails he’d received throughout the night. Struggling not to panic he walked quickly down the stairs then the hallway to the kitchen to find his wife, Marsha. She turned round to see him as he entered, her smile evaporating in seconds when she saw his face. Just then, an arm reached in through the open side-door and grabbed her, pulling her into the drive-way.

Before he could move a muscle to help he was grabbed from the side. Joe pushed away to release the grip but he and the unseen assailant both twisted and lost balance, falling against the kitchen cupboards and on to the tiled floor. He heard the screams of his wife outside. Joe wriggled free and scrambled away from the attacker. It was a large Indian man in his fifties in a painter and decorators outfit with bulging watery eyes and a horrific bite mark on his neck. He rose up and lounged towards Joe once more, emitting a growl, but missed, careering into the kitchen table and chairs. Marsha screamed again, quieter this time, as if further away. Joe looked to the side door but it was blocked by the table. The

[bastard is kidnapping her what do I do]

Indian man came forward again. Joe reached for the cutlery drawer, pulled it open, and scrambled for the biggest knife as the attacker bore down on him, baring his teeth. He drove the wide serrated blade up and into maniac’s throat. He gagged at the guttural choking noise it made as it slid into his head all the way to the handle. Joe realised he’d just killed a man and felt like vomiting, but gathered himself and ran out the front door to save his wife. From the overwrought messages there was talk of violence and people being captured so he assumed they were trying to escape with her.

But she hadn’t gone far; she’d been dragged just outside the door and onto the grassy driveway alongside the house. But there were now three attackers, not one. He collapsed to his knees when he saw what they'd done to her. They were hunched over her, biting chunks out of different parts of her quivering body, not even bothering to look up in fear of being seen. An obese elderly man had torn off her ear with his podgy hand to feed into his blood-smeared mouth; an equally large teenage girl was biting hungrily into Marsha’s right breast, tearing a fleshy tendon up in an arc until it snapped on to her grey looking face; and a twenty-something man dressed in a blood-stained Islamic white tunic was kneeling down to hungrily chew into her lower stomach.

Just as Joe shakily rose and was about to race over to her, he sensed movement behind him. He felt long sharp fingernails dig into the back of his neck as a woman’s hand grabbed him. With a yelp he spun round to shake off whoever it was, but he lost balance on the uneven paving slab and went down, with the attacker still holding on. She landed with a thud on Joe’s front, the weight winding him and the smell of death and excrement almost making him vomit again. The image of Marsha’s twitching body raced through his mind. With reserves of strength he never knew existed he shoved up through his narrow shoulders and launched the clawing woman off his sprawled body and up in the air. She came thundering back down towards him just as he rolled out from underneath. Her skull made an audible CRACK on the paving slab. The dirty blonde hair covered her face preventing him seeing if she was still conscious but a shift in her body a second later gave him the answer and he leapt back unto his feet to rush Marsha’s attackers.

He stopped dead when he saw his wife and a deep mournful sob escaped him. All three of the cannibalistic attackers had been busy at their respective feeding areas in the ten seconds that he’d been fending off the woman. The guy at her stomach was clawing his way into her innards. The teenage girl was chewing her way round the cavity where her breast had been. The fat man had devoured her ear and now chewed into her eye socket; popping her eye and slurping it down like a child with a Cadbury’s Creme Egg.

His wife was no longer shuddering, just limp and unreactive to the triple attack. Joe felt something click deep down inside him, something give. Everything turned grey and out of focus, like he had slipped out of reality. He dimly felt a tugging at his shoe and absent-mindedly pulled away from it and stepped to the side. He stared at the remains of his wife one last time, felt hot tears spill down his face, turned round and walked slowly out his garden and into the havoc-strewn street.

Similar attacks were happening all around him, like an ultra-violent distortion of a beautiful suburban spring morning. He continued his slow steady stride to the bottom of the street, turning right towards the main road. A neighbour who came out onto his porch in his dressing gown, massively hung-over and with no idea of the city-wide meltdown, stared at Joe as he strode past the end of his garden.

“Hi—” the neighbour started, but thought better of it. Joe didn’t even flinch from his stride. He had seen Joe in the neighbourhood before and he seemed friendly. But he now thought Joe was by far the most haunted-looking human he had ever seen. That accolade would remain intact forever; he himself would be violently killed within the hour.